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One of the promotional images for the film “Two People Exchanging Saliva” is a black-and-white closeup of a woman, her face bruised, her nose bleeding, her eyes slack with ecstasy. What are we to make of the feelings that this woman stirs in us: the reflexive response of distress, and then a more cultivated, and therefore repressed, curiosity? What could hurt so good? The film is a fable about intimacy and consumerism set in a dystopian version of Paris where romantic touch, especially the kiss, is forbidden, punishable by death. The citizen in you laughs heartily as this film, a tragicomedy, skewers the hypocrisies and ironies of the repressed West. But the lover inside also aches: the directors, Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata, suspend us in a state of desire and longing, the thwarted kind.

Since 2021, the Galeries Lafayette, the luxury department store in Paris, has invited filmmakers to use its interiors at night. Singh and Musteata, who are partners in both work and life, exploit the aesthetic of the boutique, a severe geometric glamour, for their Buñuel-esque story of bourgeois sadness. The film is told in chapters. The first is called “Le Jeu” (“The Game”). A narrator, voiced by the Luxembourgian actress Vicky Krieps, her voice not godlike but instead melancholic and playful, introduces us to Malaise (Luàna Bajrami), a naïf shopgirl with sparkling eyes, counter to the meaning of her name. (Everyone in this bleak world is named after different states of bad humor.) Malaise will turn twenty-five soon. She is ill-fated, the narrator suggests. Malaise notices a customer, the beautiful Angine (Zar Amir Ebrahimi)—angina, in English, a reference to diseases of the heart—wandering soullessly through the department store, and she persuades the other woman to play a game.

The salesperson and her customer. The plain act of shopping gives cover to the instant attraction. The time to pay comes, and we receive a shock. Malaise carefully slips on a bejewelled glove and slaps Angine repeatedly. Currency in a shadowy world that condemns intimacy as animal and grotesque—“two people exchanging saliva” is another way to describe kissing—is violence. To be bruised is to be among the upper crust; Malaise’s co-workers feign status, outside of work, with painted-on bruises. The brutality of conformism, the draining of romantic love, the disavowal of human eroticism and desire—these are the tenets of the society that Singh and Musteata have drawn, with an impish humor, a society that must smell rank, given the interdiction against clean teeth.

But that slap. A punishment, a payment, a seduction, all at once. I could wax on about the allusive power of the film, its potential for mirroring our own sick societies. But what most interests me in this unnerving work is the slapping. Nothing in cinema is purer than the face. The camera’s love of the face is the medium’s original affair. And so the slap causes a visual distortion, and a spiritual betrayal—the camera running riot against its love object. “Two People Exchanging Saliva” rewrites the slap, making it akin to a kiss. Angine desperately returns to the store, again and again, to get her fix from Malaise, her face reddening from blood just below the surface, a canvas of her awakened desire. She had sleepwalked through her genteel married life, with a taciturn husband, called Chagrin, who is in the business of coffin-making—for all those unfortunate souls who could not live without the kiss.

The 2026 Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday, and two New Yorker films were named among the contenders. “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” a satire about attraction and repression in a dystopian Paris, is nominated for Best Live Action Short, while “Retirement Plan,” about a working man’s dreams for after his career ends, will compete for Best Animated Short. Should a New Yorker nominee win, March’s awards ceremony will mark the second consecutive year in which a film released by the magazine has received an Academy Award.

“Two People Exchanging Saliva,” written and directed by Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata, was inspired in part by the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement in Iran, and by the rise of the far right in the U.S. Executive-produced by Julianne Moore and Isabelle Huppert, the film imagines a world where slaps to the face have replaced currency, and kissing is illegal—and punishable by death. When a young woman, Malaise, starts working at a glamorous boutique, she develops a quick connection with a wealthy customer, Angine, igniting the envy of her supervisor. “We wanted to tell a female-led story that uses humor and imagination to reflect this moment in which the line between the ridiculous and the horrific has collapsed,” the filmmakers wrote. The story depicts “two women whose tenderness toward one another shows how an act of love—even a single kiss—can become an act of resistance.”

“Retirement Plan,” directed by John Kelly and co-written by Kelly and Tara Lawall, rests on a straightforward structure—a man’s list of ambitions for life after he stops working. And yet, in the film’s seven minutes, that list, narrated by the actor Domhnall Gleeson, takes viewers on a journey, humorously illustrating necessary tasks, aspirational hobbies—hiking, bird-watching, yoga—and life-enriching activities for which he imagines he’ll finally have time. “It feels surreal that ‘Retirement Plan’ has found such momentum,” Kelly said. “Perhaps the most surprising thing has been the emotional responses, with many people telling us how watching made them reëvaluate their lives.”

In addition to The New Yorker’s nominated films, four additional films released by the magazine—“Extremist,” “Rovina’s Choice,” “Cashing Out, and “Last Days on Lake Trinity”—had been short-listed by the Academy for this year’s awards. The nominees hope to match the Oscar victory at last year’s ceremony by The New Yorker’s “I’m Not a Robot,” a dark comedy about technology that claimed the prize for Best Live Action Short. “Stutterer,” released by the magazine in 2016, won that year’s award for Best Live Action Short.

In total, twenty-one New Yorker films have now received Academy Award nominations, including the two that went on to win. You can watch the magazine’s full library of short films at newyorker.com/video, and on the magazine’s YouTube channel.

To receive future New Yorker films in your inbox, along with movie reviews, Profiles of actors and directors, and additional coverage of the entertainment industry, sign up for the daily newsletter. ♦

I’m so excited to see you this weekend! It’s been way too long. What’s that? Oh, yeah, totally. Of course you can bring your husband along.

I actually love when your husband joins us. Sure, it was just going to be the two of us, but now it’s going to be the three of us, by which I mean that it’ll be the two of you, plus me. Which is great, because you and I did all the logistical planning, and now your husband gets to benefit from our efforts while also adding his belated two cents about how “we should have gone to that new steak place” and “we can’t stay out too late because of work tomorrow.” Which is such a good point, even though we’re meeting at noon.

No, really, making small talk with your life partner is a wonderful way for me to practice my conversational skills. It’s fun when he goes on and on about his boring and seemingly evil corporate job, which I can’t comment on, of course, because then you two will get into a fight about it later and blame me. Seriously, it’s electrifying how many third rails exist whenever he’s around, such as politics, or any subject that doesn’t revolve around him. And when he’s being condescending about some of our favorite topics, such as “The Real Housewives,” it’s exciting to feel like it’s our job to steer the conversation back to his interests.

I also love the way he never asks me any questions, as if he’s playing a one-man improv game in which he can only communicate through declarative statements.

Honestly, I was hoping to be vulnerable and discuss some difficult personal stuff with you, but you know what? That can wait. It’s not like it took us five months to find this time to meet up. What’s a few more hundred days to receive the support I could really use right now? Or I guess I could open up with your husband sitting there, while he half-listens and checks e-mail on his phone. I’m thrilled to have my private life be fodder for your gossip on the drive home. And this way we can forgo the illusion that you’re not repeating what I share to your spouse anyway, and I can experience firsthand his dismissive and belittling takes on my life choices.

I’m not trying to be rude, but doesn’t your husband have friends he could spend time with while we hang out? Oh, he never makes his own plans? Really? Cool, cool. Well, then, let me just say that it’s genuinely an honor to help solve the male-loneliness epidemic, one husband at a time. I feel privileged to be a part of the solution by letting your spouse cosplay friendship for an afternoon. Really, I should be expressing my gratitude to you and your husband for letting me be a part of the change I wish to see.

In fact, I will express my gratitude. At the end of the hang, I’ll be sure to thank the two of you for the lovely outing. I might even say, “We should do this again some time!,” owing to my people-pleasing tendencies, which I’ll spend the next few weeks working through in therapy. I love leaving a get-together with my dear friend feeling vaguely extraneous and heartwrenchingly nostalgic for a time in our lives when including partners in absolutely every activity wasn’t the norm.

But yes! Definitely bring him along. I can’t wait. ♦

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Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz celebrate the one-hundredth episode of Critics at Large with a special installment of the podcast’s advice series. Together, they counsel callers on everything from turning non-readers into bibliophiles to the art of curating the ideal road-trip playlist. They’re joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who shares some cultural dilemmas of his own. Finally, the hosts turn the tables and ask for guidance from their listeners.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Billie Holiday’s “Body and Soul”
Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde”
Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”
The music of Laufey
“I Regret Almost Everything,” by Keith McNally
“The Palm House,” by Gwendoline Riley
“Task” (2025-)
“Die, My Love” (2025)
“Carol” (2015)
“The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith
“Surface Matters,” by Naomi Fry (The New Republic)
Geese’s “Getting Killed”
“What Went Wrong”
Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy
“The Ambassadors,” by Henry James
“Marty Supreme” (2025)
“Why Football Matters” (The New Yorker)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

On a recent January evening, throngs of Iranian protesters filed up wide boulevards spanning the northeastern city of Mashhad. Within hours, the highways and footbridges were packed with people, including young children trailing their mothers and grandparents. Most wore masks and dark clothing. As the crowds thickened, police tried to disperse the swell of people with tear gas. Around 8 P.M., internet service was cut, and, soon after, security forces started shooting into the demonstrations.

Some of the protesters crawled to escape the gunfire. Others bled to death on sidewalks or on the backs of strangers who had tried to carry them to safety. But the government forces kept firing into the crush of demonstrators.

The massacre in Mashhad unfolded on January 8th, after Iranians across the country went out to protest the regime—the culmination of a movement that had convulsed the country for nearly two weeks, following the collapse of the economy. Under the cover of a nationwide internet blackout, security forces used lethal weapons to target demonstrators from rooftops, bridges, and building complexes. Only now, more than a week later, have details corroborating the scope of the carnage begun to emerge. The mass killing continued over the next two nights, according to five Iranians with whom I spoke, who witnessed the violence and who shared videos with me. “For three nights, the streets of my home town turned into a killing field,” one demonstrator, whom I will refer to as M., told me. M. went out each evening to help recover the wounded and the dead. “The death was incomprehensible,” he said. Corpses were piled in parks and hospitals throughout Mashhad. Some of the injured were treated by protesters in alleyways, or by doctors operating from makeshift clinics in their homes.

One pediatrician, who was on duty at a children’s hospital on January 9th, told me that her staff transported more than a hundred and fifty corpses from their emergency ward to one of the city’s main cemeteries, Behesht-e Reza, that night. At least thirty of the dead were under the age of eighteen. “I saw an eight-year-old child who was shot in the chest,” she told me, over the phone. “This regime has no sense of humanity.” Families have been forced to pay fees for their relatives’ remains. Many could not reclaim them unless they signed fake death certificates confirming that their loved ones had been murdered by violent protesters or had died of natural causes.

The accounts from Mashhad, Iran’s second-most populous city, are a small window into one of the most lethal government actions the Iranian regime has taken in recent history. The country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this past Saturday that thousands had been killed in the unrest. This is likely a fraction of the actual death toll, which has been obscured by the internet blackout.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency has verified more than forty-five hundred deaths, including over seven hundred in Mashhad. Witnesses, including one emergency doctor, who spoke with the Center for Human Rights in Iran, estimate that the death toll in Mashhad could exceed more than two thousand.

Some protesters, like M., have broken through the digital shutdown using Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite-internet service, which is banned in Iran. Security agents have been going door to door, raiding homes to confiscate satellite dishes and arresting anyone who is using the service. Authorities have warned that citizens caught using Starlink could be sent to prison for up to two years. Iran’s attorney general has said that all “rioters” will be considered “enemies of God,” a charge that could lead to their execution. “Let them find me,” M. told me. “I could have been killed a hundred times during these past few days. There are too many dead. The world should know what has happened here.”

Several months ago, M. was sitting in a prison cell while security forces searched his home after the government alleged that he was a foreign spy. It was days after Israel started attacking Iran, in June, and the Iranian authorities had ordered a manhunt for suspected infiltrators. At least twenty-one thousand were arrested, including M., who believes he was targeted for publishing anti-government posts on social media. He was released, but the experience hardened his rage for the regime. “They only know how to govern with fear,” he said.

His resentment carried him into the streets of Mashhad to join the protests, which reached a fever pitch, days later, after Reza Pahlavi, the U.S.-based son of the former Shah, posted a video that urged Iranians to join anti-government demonstrations in cities across the country on Thursday and Friday. They were emboldened further by President Donald Trump, who wrote on Truth Social that the United States would come to their “rescue” if protesters were killed. “People lost their fear,” M. told me. “They all left their homes to fight for a new future—and they were slaughtered for it.”

M. and his friends provided me with videos, which have been verified and support key parts of the narrative put forward by witnesses. The clips have been altered to protect the identities of those depicted. The interview with M. has been edited for length and clarity.

I will try my best to tell you what happened. My wife is scared every hour at night. She goes and checks the windows to make sure no one is there. She doesn’t want me to talk to you, but they have killed so many people, and I need to do this.

It all started because of crazy inflation. The craziest inflation in our life. First we saw online that people in the biggest bazaar in Tehran had started protesting. I saw Trump talking about Iran, and he said that if the government shoots the protesters the U.S. is going to shoot back. We believed him. Trump is a man of his word. Also, online, everyone was sharing a video post from Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, encouraging us to protest.

Suddenly, everyone lost their fear. Before that day, no one had the courage to post Instagram Stories about the protests, because they knew that they would go to jail. But, this time, it was like everyone was supporting Pahlavi. They reposted his video, putting him in their stories. There was this feeling: “We’re gonna make it this time.” That was how we felt that day. Everyone was writing on social media—“just get to a street. Walking is not a crime.” Then many other people across the country started filling the streets in every big city.

I couldn’t believe what I saw on Thursday. It started as a normal day. The government shut down the internet at 7 P.M., one hour before the Thursday protests began. I decided to go out, but I didn’t bring my phone, because the government can follow people.

At 8 P.M., my wife and I walked twenty minutes to Vakilabad Highway. Each second, we saw more people gathering. Then we got to the crossroads, one of the biggest, most famous crossroads in our town. We saw thousands of people coming from all directions. It was really crazy. Everyone was chanting against the government.

A few minutes later, we heard the first gunshots. It was rubber bullets. We saw some people with blood on their faces. People started throwing stones at the police, but the security forces were too far away. The police started using tear gas and sound bombs, but we were too many people. Everyone was screaming, “Don’t go back. Stay. We can defeat them.”

Nearby is this bridge called Haft Tir Highway, and a police station. The riot police took off on motorcycles, with people chasing them, running at them. We get to the police station and we stay there and start protesting.

My wife says, “I’m going home.” Her right foot is broken and she has a cast on it, so I gave her the keys.

We were in front of the police station, on the ground over the bridge. We were watching the police station—who is there, who’s not there. We saw an officer open a wooden box and take out a gun.

The bridge was full of demonstrators. The officer started using the gun, firing straight into us, at our faces and backs. So many people were getting shot. So many of them were screaming. Two people got shot next to me, but I managed to get on the ground and crawl down from the bridge.

When the shooting paused, we went back to the bridge to check on the people who were shot. One of them was shot in the leg. Another was shot in the chest. A group of us helped to bring them out and carry them for about two hundred metres, to a small clinic on the same street. One was screaming, the one shot in his leg. The other man was passed out, not dead, but he wouldn’t move at all.

When we arrived at the clinic, it was total chaos. Ten people were on the floor screaming in pain and waiting for help, but the nurses were attending to other people in worse conditions. There were only two doctors and five nurses. You could see bloody handprints on the walls.

There was a young woman in one of the rooms who had died. I was worried that it might be my wife. That was the hardest moment of the night, but I looked at her feet and I didn’t see my wife’s shoes.

After helping those two men to the clinic, I decided to walk home to check on my wife. When I got home, I saw that she wasn’t there, so I went back out to find her.

I walked down every street, looking for her all the way back to the police station. Then I went back to the clinic thinking she might have been injured. But I still couldn’t find her.

Soon after, I saw someone carrying a man I saw shot earlier. He told me that the man would die if we didn’t get him to the larger hospital nearby. So I carried him myself to a waiting car.

When we arrived at the emergency room, someone told me to put him down on an open bed. The only bed available was dirty and bloody, but it was empty. The nurse came and said, “He’s already dead,” and closed his eyes.

I continued searching for my wife there, too. Two officers started to question me. I had a mask on, and I was covered in blood from the people I was helping.

They asked me, “Where did you find this dead body? Why are you wearing a mask? And why are you covered in blood?” A doctor who was nearby helped me get away. He got very angry at the officers and said, “Why are you bothering him? He just saved someone. Why are you doing these things to your people?” I ran out of the hospital.

I started to make my way back home. A dead city on fire. It was like a civil war. I saw people running, running and screaming. I saw police shooting tear gas. I heard guns. I ran and I got home.

My wife opened the door. I saw that she was covered in blood, and I was scared that she got shot, but thanks to God she was just helping people. She hugged me, and she started crying. She explained to me what she had experienced. She was helping the protesters who were getting shot near the police station. Doctors had opened up their home and were helping people.

On Friday and Saturday, we made sure that we were prepared this time. My wife and I went to a drugstore. We bought stuff for helping people if they got injured, like bandages, and things to clean gunshot wounds. My wife said, “Bring your phone today, to record.”

We saw many more people than Thursday. We saw kids, young girls, old men. It was like every person was out. I even saw one man who lost one of his legs, who was in a wheelchair, and a woman who was pushing him, protesting.

Things quickly became violent again. Five or six men carrying guns and tear gas started shooting at us. We fled into an alley and came across a young woman on the stairs in front of a home. She was shot in the face with metal pellets. She was in so much pain. We helped clean and bandaged her face. We asked her not to scream, because the forces would find us.

On Sunday, I said to my wife, “I’m going to check if anyone is out there protesting. If they are, I will tell you to come.” No one was there—it was only the police. I saw snipers on the bridge.

When we first entered the streets, there was hope that we could do something, and that Israel and the U.S. would help us. Now there is just death—so many dead. And the evidence of the killing is gone. The streets are clean. I cannot believe it. There are no bodies in the hospital. They are all at the cemeteries. They are only letting blood relatives check the bodies. Even if you find your family members’ corpses, you cannot give them a burial if you cannot pay. After you pay, you need to sign papers stating that it was a natural accident.

There are people here who still believe in this government. They are living on another planet. My brother did not go to the protests last week. I saw him recently and he did not believe what I told him about what I saw—until I showed him my videos. My own brother. People choose to be blind. I am losing hope. It feels darker than before.

Right now, everyone is being careful. I am checking my front door every hour. I feel like they could arrest me at any minute.

The government announced that people who have Starlink disks need to hand them over. If you keep it hidden, if you don’t report it and they discover it in your home, they will arrest you. The sentence is two years. But, if they discover that I am speaking to foreigners, they will execute me. I have no doubt about that.

Still, if I don’t speak about it, it will be as if it didn’t happen. ♦